This Is A Long Drive For Someone With A Lot To Listen To... A Sunday Sermon

Dan here. Been a while for me as well with the blogging and the keeping people informed. As James has already pointed out, we've been busy with prepping the record, the tour dates, and also rehabbing a new practice space with state of the art (read: whatever I can find extremely discounted on the Internet) gear. My standards for the new gear have been "Will not course electricity through my body when turned on." So far, so good.

I recently went on one of my long jaunts up through New York State (where James and I both hail from). Being unemployed until the start of July, I've had some time to kill and have been spending it seeing family and friends who have otherwise gone neglected for the last couple of years. With that said, my preferred method of transport is almost always a car, and preferably be one that I'm driving. I have at times a raging type-A thing going on, and being in control of a vehicle helps.

So during my last trip, I loaded up the fauxPod with a ton of records that I've downloaded and haven't gotten around to listening to yet. Here are a few that I finally got a chance to check out over the last week:

The Wooden Birds' "Magnolia"
- This is Andrew Kenny's new band. Kenny was the frontman for an absolutely superb band called The American Analog Set, one of my personal faves from college. It's a very muted, quiet record, with very sparse arrangement and a ton of close mic-ing on everything. I really love the tight, up-close-and-personal sound on this record, it's hardly treated at all (ie. no walls of reverb, overproduced drums and vocals, ten-layer guitar tracks, etc.). Kenny's voice is hushed and soothing, and the girl he has singing with his is excellent. Fans of AAS, Songs:Ohia and the like would definitely enjoy this.

Heaven and Hell's "The Devil You Know"

- Old rock stars should just sit at home, collect their royalties, and stop embarrassing themselves by creating reality shows that show what dysfunctional lives they lead. Unless you're Ronnie James Dio, Tommy Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice and you want to pretty much pick up where "Mob Rules" era Sabbath left off. Heaven and Hell is the post-Ozzy lineup of Black Sabbath, often overlooked by most fans, but glorified by the die-hards. The new record is by no means an earth-shattering reinterpretation of anything. It is a solid album of old metal dudes proving to the rest of the genre that they must never forget the face of their father. Iommi's lead playing has really progressed, and there is not as much of his classic "pentatonic noodling" (that's a Josh term, and I thank him for it). This record came on at a point where I was starting to get a bit car-groggy, and it did the trick better than a 5-Hour Energy Shot.

Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest"

- I am not very familiar with Grizzly Bear, but this got some insane rating in Pitchfork (who could snark at anything, I swear). What a fresh sounding record! Only gave it a once-through listen, but I was really impressed with the overall tone of this record. I could produce a laundry-list of influences on this , but rather than playing the spot-influence-then-cross-reference game I often play in my head, I just let it happen. That doesn't happen often to me, so it's welcome when it does.

Sonic Youth's "The Eternal"

- SY is one of those bands that has influenced me so hugely, but which you can hear almost no evidence of when I play. Like The Velvet Underground, I think everyone who bought SY albums in their musically formative years went out and formed bands, whether those bands sounded like "Goo" and "Daydream Nation" or not. Mine certainly didn't. My fave from them still continues to be "Murray Street", and "The Eternal" works on me in the same way, which means I enjoy it as a record from a very talented crew of players who have been consistently making records for around 25 years, and I get to accept it as part of a very large body of work, an autobiographical progression of songwriting, if you will. I love a band that just goes out and does what they want, how they want and has a fan base that is (for the most part) willing to give it all a shot and not bitch and moan about artistic vision, major label betrayal and the like. "The Eternal" is incredibly accessible, very melodic in a lot of places and genuinely a great rock record.

Phish's Summer '09 Tour Tapes

- Like James said previously, they're playing better than they've played since coming back from hiatus. I was lucky enough to see them in Camden a couple of weeks ago, and it was like coming home. Proclaiming anything about Phish stirs up a lot of sentiment from both sides of the coin, but they've been one of my favorite bands since high school and will never apologize for that, ever. The Northeast tour tapes have been truly great to listen to because I get to hear four of my musical heroes refind what they love about playing music while they're finding it.

Okay, enough of my gushing. I tend to only post about music that I love, so you'll rarely hear me snark about much of anything musical here. If I don't like it, I tend to just not mention it, as it isn't worth my time to listen to, much less write about.

In Sobriquets news: We've got a date coming up July 1st in Philly at Lickety Split on 4th and South Streets. This place has been hosting a great roster of bands from Philly and beyond, and we hope to see you there. Check out thesobriquets.com as usual for more dates, particularly the CD release shows on July 17th and 18th. The show on the 17th is with a band we recently played with in Baltimore and we just love them. I'll gush about them later in the week, I'm sure.

-Dan

Sad Bastard Sunday Roundup: Tuesday Edition

Hey all... James here.

Haven't blogged in awhile (save for my occasional texted rants to my other blog, though I haven't really sent any of those in awhile either).

Been pretty hard at work prepping the new record (details of which to be released soon), and booking our summer tour dates to promote said record (details of which to ALSO be released soon). For those of you thinking we haven't been playing nearly enough shows of late, believe you me, we feel the same way. One gig or so a month just ain't cutting it for this big-haired geek, to say the least. I need to make an ass out of myself in public at least thrice fortnightly or I start to get weird (how would we know, you ask snarkily... you'd know).

Been also watching a lot of Phillies... well, actually, not WATCHING the Phillies, per se. I don't have cable, and most of the games are on Satan's Sports Net (and for once, I use "Satan" not to refer to the Fox Network). I spend many an evening (too many, one might suggest) staring at MLB.com's Gameday, providing me an almost visually interesting display of pitch by pitch. It's kind of like video game graphics from the mid 80s when the game froze, and all you could do was watch the CPU throw strikes past you whilst your NES began to shake, then to smoke, and lastly to weep, ever so gently, in the corner.

Aaaaanyway... the boys are doing, generally, quite well of late (admittedly, not so much today), though I had an odd weekend last weekend: I don't think I've ever rooted against the Red Sox and FOR the Yankees in the same, well, ever. I know it's trendy to shit on the Sox because of Red Sox Nation (which, in fairness to Bostonians, we here in Philly would be probably just as bad, if we could win more than one championship per generation), but having grown up reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) a lot of Stephen King, I can't hate the Red Sox. I can't. Except when they play (and especially beat) the Phils. But AT THE SAME TIME, the Yankees (who I, like all thinking people, despise) were playing the Mets (who I wouldn't have really any too many negative feelings about, except they and the Phillies have this rivalry, see, and therefore must lose at all cost). Up was down, black was white, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

Watching the Wire... halfway through Season 5... wherein everyone loses their damn minds...

Getting ready to go to Warshington and pelt Congress with small stones until they stop being stupid.

That's about all for today. Perhaps I'll get back to blogging more regularly... or maybe not.

Listened to a couple sets of Phish from last week... for those of you who may profit from this information, allow me to say they're playing better than at really any time in the past decade.

That is all.

Loves,

J

I Got Nothin' (Sorta)

For real. I have very little going on that I haven't already talked about.

I'm still in the middle of that show about women, and it's absolutely become a job. I don't want to go, but I need the money. And on rare occasions, it's fun. Recently we started dicking around and trying to add classic movie themes into the middle of songs, whenever possible. Day 1 involved the theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The guitar player managed to sneak it in just about everywhere. As the bassist, it's a lot harder for me to include these things. Day 2 was a particular challenge. We were trying to work in any music from Star Wars. Have you every tried playing the Imperial March in the middle of "I Will Survive"? Not entirely possible. However, playing the riff from Peter Gunn during "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" actually works pretty well. If anyone can think of movie themes that are easy to insert (a la Close Encounters), please let me know.

Also, I've been reading an exhaustive history of heavy metal music called Metal: A Definitive Guide by Garry Sharpe-Young. He spent 20 years culling all the information and interviews, and has organized the bands (about 75 of them) by type. It starts with Heavy Metal, such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Budgie, and goes on from there. It includes some of my favorite bands in there, such as 3 Inches Of Blood, Testament, Nevermore, Lamb of God, you name it. It's about 8" by 9", with size 6 font, and 500 freakin' pages, man. It took me 4 days to read about Black Sabbath alone. (On a very smooth side note, Paul Donato, one of the many, many replacements for vocalists Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio [inset], fronted the band Keep under the pseudonym Michael McDonald following his Sabbath career. The band also featured Mark St. John of Deep Purple and KISS drummer Peter Criss.)

And finally, even though it's in the Twitter, Dan took the new EP over to DiscMakers in Camden to get pressed. Should be back very shortly, at which point you will buy it. Not may buy it, WILL buy it. You can't see it, but I'm glowering and shaking my fist at you through the computer.

In summary, apparently I did have some stuff to talk about.

- Josh

Optimistic Monday

Does anyone else religiously follow box office returns for Hollywood films? I've been doing it since I was a kid (when we looked at the news on something called "paper"). As many of you know, I've been particularly interested in the performance of the new Star Trek movie, being a fan of the franchise and of JJ Abrams.

Star Trek has been faring well, posting the lowest declines from week to week of any film this year. While I would imagine the quality of the story, production values, and marketing probably influence a film's box office performance the most, some reviews have attributed Star Trek's success to another factor: optimism.

Star Trek as a franchise has always reflected a rosy view of the future, honoring the wishes of its creator, Gene Roddenberry. This did not change for the latest installment. However, the most successful "reboots" of franchises in the last few years were Casino Royale and Batman Begins, both dark and brooding films. So when I saw Terminator Salvation last week, I wondered why it was performing much worse than anticipated.

Both Terminator and Star Trek have questionable stories, well-known characters, lots of explosions, slick special effects, and young, talented casts. There are many differences, for sure. But the most obvious difference is the setting. Why do more people in 2009 prefer the utopian sheen of Star Trek over the post-apocalyptic gloom of Terminator? Where would you want to spend your two hours?

And hey, The Sobriquets are doing things again! We're playing shows, finalizing EP artwork, and practicing in our new space. We're all very happy about that.

- Nick

Thank the Good Dude, It's Over

Josh here. It's been a while since I blogged, and with good reason. I've spent the past 3 weeks doing my darnedest NOT to fail out of grad school.

Well, to be fair, not to fail one class. But it was a doozy. However, I successfully earned a D+ in said class, so life rolls on. I will miss looking like Macaulay Culkin, though.

I've also been tied up with the closest thing to a real job I've had in 5 years. Since the end of April, I've been performing in RESPECT: A Musical Journey Of Women at the Act II Playhouse in adorable Ambler, PA (adjacent to Norristown, and a short hop from the imposing-sounding BROAD AXE). And let me tell you, if you think men are scum, if you remember the 40s, and if you want to sit in a theater and go "mm-hmm" for 2+ hours, then come on down. Seriously, the show definitely panders to 50-and-up female crowd, but it IS a pretty fun show. All the actresses are really nice, and the pay is good. But you will feel like a dick for having a penis (ba-dum-bum) if you sit through this.

One of the crew pointed out to me that there's only one man in the entire show who doesn't get a bad rap, and it's Dr. Martin Luther motherfucking King. The rest of us didn't have a prayer.

The band is finally working again after an unexpected hiatus (much of which was my fault), and we're looking forward to our upcoming show this Saturday, the 23rd, at Doc Watson's. It just so happens to be our 50th show, as well as James' 29th birthday. It's going to be a time, so come on down! I'll be screeching in around 11:15, minutes before our set, as I have a performance of RESPECT that night as well. Ah, the joys of professional musicianing.

Until next time, keep on tranglin'. (?)

The Punny Side of the Street

Sunday was Sad. So you'd think Monday would be happy here at the Sobriquets blog, right? I'd like to say it is, but it isn't. The rain won't go away! It's dampening my spirits, to say the least. Isn't there a saying about April showers bringing May flowers? I would like to see some of those flowers. Dry flowers.

Well, I'm sure it's the REAL May somewhere, so if anyone is having nice weather, be sure to comment below and rub it in. Describe it well, though. It'll make our visualization easier.

Today would be a good day to listen to some Sobriquets music. I think I'll "pop in" my copy of the soon-to-be-released Sobriquets EP. Since I don't have a physical CD, what do I say? I'll "click it on"? I'll "point to play"? What do you think? The digital revolution is upon us, so I guess we need to invent some new phrases. Are there a lot of phrases that sound dated if taken literally, but still in use in common modern language? Is there a term for THAT? Maybe my friend Nate Green will post something about this on his blog.

Good night everyone.

Sad Monday,
Nick

Sad Bastard Sunday Roundup: Rainy May Edition

Sad Bastard Sunday is right: no Phillies. Lame. Now what am I supposed to do between laundry and dinner?

Anyway... we had our first rehearsal in our new space, high above the street (which is really exciting when one is carrying amps, or drums, or a two ton anvil... this experiment may cause us all to have legs like Popeye's arms). Seemed to go well, though evidently I lack the proper tools to be able to set up much sound baffling (who knew you needed staples in a staple gun?). This is what I get for not being particularly handy. Pics to come soon.

This week, Arlen Specter changed parties (sorta), David Souter announced his retirement, and Nick finished editing the first of what we hope will be many, many video diaries of the Sobriquets. It includes live footage of us playing Boundary Blurring, a song which is, as yet, unavailable. Unless you were following our Download of the Month last year for the week between Christmas and New Years. Or go to our website right now and stream it. So I guess it's kind of available.

Speaking of Downloads of the month... Well, this is embarrassing... it turns out that last month, I was apparently asleep at the switch. April never got a Download of the Month. UNTIL NOW, BABY!!! Due to my egregious laziness/forgetfulness/uselessness, y'all get, in addition to the song I had intended to post, but also a sneak preview of a song from the new, almost-named EP coming out in July! Don't get too used to this generosity... I'm a cruel, cruel man.

Anyway, we're playing the Seaside Music Festival in Seaside Heights, NJ on the 15th, then our 50th SHOW SPECTACULAR WHICH IS ALSO MY BIRTHDAY on May 23rd at Doc Watson's here in Philly... so those oughta be pretty good parties.

Here's some pictures from our recent travels!

And the camera said, "Why is there only one set of footprints?"

And I said, "Because I was carrying you..."

Josh & Dan ponder the ineffable.

Nick & I create a feedback loop.

I try to leam at the James Leaming House.

Yay guitars (and amps and drums buried by guitars)!!

Me

Dan

Josh

Nick

The next two places are on the same block in New Cumberland, PA:

After taking this shot, the camera dies... is it me?

So anyway... gonna go have dinner now... See y'all soon!!

J(ames)

PS: The new Neko Case record is AMAZING.